list.co.uk/books Reviews | BOOKS
SOCIAL SATIRE DAVE EGGERS A Hologram for the King (Hamish Hamilton) ●●●●●
You can practically touch the satire oozing from the pages of A Hologram for the King. This parable of America being diluted and threatened in the face of a brutal global economy has Dave Eggers at his default setting of ambitious, amusing and perceptive. The man behind literary publications McSweeney’s and The Believer as well as the most audaciously titled debut of our times (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, for pity’s sake) pulls off another stirring feat with this tale of one man and his endless disappointments. Alan Clay is a fiftysomething consultant for Reliant, a major IT supplier whose big payday is looming if they can succeed in selling a holographic teleconferencing system to King Abdullah. Based in the Saudi desert, Alan and his team endure long fruitless days attempting to set up their pitch and he regresses into worrying about his past, knocking back the moonshine and impotently fooling around. But the near- bankrupt Clay also has more familial concerns nagging away with a failed marriage behind him and a daughter who is relying on her father financially to get her through college.
As well as being a literary lampoon on the US and its increasingly shaky place in the world (when blast-proof glass is being manufactured for the second World Trade Centre, China wins the contract), this is an almost Kafkaesque portrait of alienation and frustration in the face of misinformation, missed appointments and the inability to puncture barriers (both physical and psychological). A Hologram for the King is as witty and erudite as you’d expect from Eggers without him resorting to needless flamboyancy. (Brian Donaldson)
R H A G A L R A C
SCI-FI COMEDY CHRISTOPHER BROOKMYRE Bedlam (Orbit) ●●●●●
For his 15th book, Christopher Brookmyre forsakes crime for the first in a trilogy of gaming-based sci-fi novels, tied to future multi-platform games from virtual environment creators RedBedlam. Despite an intentionally disorientating plot, racing along with the slickness of a smooth first-person shooter, it’s a compelling concept as the author unleashes his rascally, down-to-earth humour in a very different kind of universe. A disgruntled scientist in the
overlooked Stirling outpost of shady corporate giants, Neurosphere, Ross Baker wakes from an experiment to find himself battling space marines in the carnage of Starfire, a game he played to death as a teenager. From the 1984 ZX spectrum classic Jet Set Willy to a land conceived by Daily Mail readers, he traverses countless worlds as he desperately tries to get home.
Brookmyre’s similes tend to be overcooked but he clearly relishes the deep, existential questions he sets up, sweeping the reader up in immersive space battles and Nazi-blasting. (Jay Richardson)
ROMANTIC COMEDY LUCY ELLMANN Mimi (Bloomsbury) ●●●●●
Edinburgh-based American author Lucy Ellmann has fashioned a quirkily distinctive voice mixing righteous rage with laugh-out-loud humour. Mimi finds her on top form, couching in whimsical wit a provocative riff on romance and feminism, explored unusually from a male perspective. After slipping on ice and spraining his ankle in New York on Christmas Eve, eminent plastic surgeon and self- pitying melancholic Harrison Hanafan is aided by ‘wacko broad’ Mimi, who freakishly re-enters his life during a reflective period of convalescence as he plans a speech for graduates of his old high school. Their resulting unlikely relationship redefines his attitudes to work, sex, the female shape and the vital role of women in his life, from his interfering ex Gertrude to his struggling artist sister Bee.
It’s all flighty enough to make a Wes Anderson film look like gritty realism, but engages serious themes – a tragedy befalling Bee in particular fires Harrison’s anger against male cruelty, with his school speech always promising to provide a hilariously ridiculous dénouement. (Malcolm Jack)
SOCIAL DRAMA NIALL GRIFFITHS A Great Big Shining Star (Jonathan Cape) ●●●●●
As some of the architects of the British micro-celebrity explosion come under the scrutiny of the Savile inquiry, Niall Griffiths deconstructs the life of someone who yearns to live her life in the pages of Heat and Nuts. Grace wants to leave her small Welsh seaside town behind and join the parade of Chantelles in the city. Armed with a little surgery, body dysmorphia and a desire for adoration and fame, she begins her societal ascent. But someone is watching. Someone who can remember her when she was a sweet and innocent rural schoolgirl. With his heightened style, strong grasp of north-west English and Welsh vernaculars and delight in nature’s distractions, Griffiths is always a brutal and barbarous pleasure to read. Few authors capture youthful vacuity and obsession better and A Great Big Shining Star is of a narrative trajectory with his previous novels (one of which, Kelly + Victor, has just been adapted for screen). Structurally the novel is seasonally maladjusted, while politically and creatively, it’s a call to arms. (Paul Dale)
POP MEMOIR TRACEY THORN Bedsit Disco Queen (Virago) ●●●●●
This opus from Everything But the Girl’s Tracey Thorn masquerades as a brilliant pop biography, but it’s also a fascinating tale of love, growing up, letting go and finding your way. And it beautifully illustrates how we make sense of our lives in retrospect. Charting UK pop and indie culture
from the punk explosion onward, Bedsit Disco Queen offers a wise and humorous take on Thorn’s career and aesthetic. From teenage all-girl post-punks The Marine Girls (who influenced Hole, Nirvana and LCD Soundsystem) through genre-defying pop duo Everything But the Girl (alongside her husband Ben Watt), to Thorn’s thriving solo endeavours, her keystones are feminism, socialism and punk ideology. While the lyrics cast new light upon
a stunning singer and her quiet, revolutionary songs, crucially the book is packed with glorious anecdotes: Thorn hiding in a wardrobe to sing to her first band, awaiting a call from Paul Weller in a Hull phonebox, and how Fairport Convention paved the way for alliances with Massive Attack and Todd Terry. (Nicola Meighan)
24 Jan–21 Feb 2013 THE LIST 43